


Suns Set

by thesearchforbluejello



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Doctor Who has always been a choose your own canon adventure lbr, Gen, I try on canon like I try on clothes okay, I'd say it's horror lite, Post-Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Pre-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, but no prior knowledge of the audios needed, gratuitous references to Charley Pollard, it's Halloween so let's get spooky, it's spooky but it's not really horror, really just gratuitous references to all sorts of different spooky things, references to Embrace the Darkness and other audios
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: The festival has come. The suns are shining.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote half of this in 2018, a couple episodes into series 11, and suddenly felt the need to come back to it last week. Massive, MASSIVE thanks to tyrsenian for being such an incredible beta and making me actually think things through. Updates will be every Saturday because grad school makes me do things. (The fic is very nearly finished, so updates will be consistent.)
> 
> Happy spook day, folks.

“This, uh, wasn’t what I expected,” Ryan says, standing just outside the TARDIS doors.

“What do you mean?” The Doctor steps backwards out the door, pulling it shut with a sound that echoes. “I-- oh.” She looks out at the corridor and blinks in surprise. 

“A bit dark,” Graham states drily when she hesitates. She stares out into the darkness that laps greedily at the hazy light clouding around the TARDIS windows. It congeals into a heavy mass concealing the corridor that, presumably, stretches away ahead of them. “Doc?” he asks, voice soft and wary, when she still doesn’t respond.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Yaz asks, just as softly.

The Doctor shakes her head like she’s dislodging a particularly unpleasant thought. “Nah!” she says with a grin that splits the confusion. “I’ve just never been to this part of the city before! Took me a second to get my bearings. I was _trying_ to put us on the surface,” she says, shooting a dirty look over her shoulder at the TARDIS.

“If this isn’t the surface, where are we?” Ryan asks even as Graham huffs, put upon but good-natured.

“See the pipes? Sewage, water, steam; it’s a whole network of vital arteries carrying life to the people above. We’re beneath the city!” she says, throwing her arms out with a broad gesture at everything around them.

“You’re more excited about that than you should be,” Ryan says.

“Come on,” the Doctor says, fumbling the sonic from the inside pocket of her coat. The pale yellow casts just enough light for them to see where they’re stepping. “If we follow the pipes we can find an access point to the surface. I hope I got the dates right this time; not that the Parsonian Revolution of Three dot Delta One wasn’t exciting--”

“A little too exciting,” Ryan mutters, to which Yaz grins.

“--but the Suns Set Festival only happens once every sixty-two years, when _both_ of the binary suns set on the same day! Imagine: only seeing the stars once in your life-- twice, if you’re incredibly lucky. Stars are such a prominent symbol of luck here that--”

Ryan trips and the scuff of his shoe on the floor is sharp and loud in the tunnel. An echo, buried beneath, and a cold wave of terror pours down the Doctor’s spine. She reaches an arm out to push Ryan behind her and brandishes the sonic ahead of them, back up the way they’d come, like a torch. The rest of the fam take a step behind her and maybe she should realize that that’s uncharacteristic of this lot, that they always try to face everything beside her rather than behind her, that this is somehow wrong. She can feel their fear in the air, sharp like citrus, a sting against her skin. She thinks unbidden of Charley, Charley choking on her own terror, screaming in the dark. It was so long ago. She gropes back in her memory as she tries to recall where they’d been. She can almost remember the base. And a planet soaking in darkness. But why was Charley screaming? She can almost hear it now.

“Doc, what is it?” Graham whispers.

She almost chokes on her surprise at his voice. She checks the reading on the sonic, her hearts pounding in her throat. “Nothing,” she says. She stares at it a moment longer. Something isn’t connecting and the gap is almost tangible. “Nothing,” she says again. “Come on, fam,” she says, chipper again, the fear sloughing away like water off a duck’s back.

“Nice creatures, ducks,” she says in the sudden need for something to fill the silence. She doesn't know what brought them to mind, but ducks are as good a topic as any. “Did you know, I once met a whole race of hyperintelligent duck-forms--” That feeling again, breath on her neck, Charley screaming in the dark. She arcs the sonic from the corridor ahead of them, over her head, pivoting back towards where the TARDIS sits, out of sight, swallowed by the darkness. She can’t even see the glow of her police-box light on top.

Their breath is loud in the corridor like the walls are echoing it back to them. The Doctor holds her breath and listens. 

“No, no, no, you can tell us about the ducks later,” Graham says, not unkindly. “I want to hear about this festival we’ve tried six times to get to.”

Something, bittersharp and sourbright on her tongue like citrus. An aftertaste.

“Not ducks,” she says absently. “Duck-forms,” she corrects as she leads them on again, the light of the sonic yellow against the floor, darkening to gold at the edges. “And I did apologize for the Parsonian Revolution, and so did they, actually.”

“At least they gave us lunch,” Graham concedes. Ryan laughs at him, loud in the darkness.

“There’s food here too!” the Doctor ameliorates. “It’s a festival, of course there’s food! The Sunset Festival is the biggest event in this system; travellers from all over come to Altaervis for this!”

“Like us!” Yaz adds.

“Just like us!” the Doctor agrees. “I’ve always wanted to come here. Don’t know why I never did.”

“I thought you’d been here before?” Ryan interjects.

“Yeah-- this festival better be as good as you made it sound,” Graham adds. “Six tries, it took us.”

“Graham,” the Doctor berates, drawing the syllables of his name apart.

“How long ‘til we’re up top?” Yaz asks, ever the peacemaker.

“Not long!” the Doctor says, taking the redirection in stride. “These pipes run through the whole city; workers have to be able to access them when they need repair or maintenance, so we should find an access hatch that we can use to get to the surface!”

“Great,” Ryan says. “Ladders.”

“Just the one,” the Doctor says sympathetically. “Probably.” She scrunches her nose. “Maybe two. We shouldn’t be far below the city itself. It should still be daylight up there! I set us to arrive a few hours before the actual sunset.”

“It’ll be a relief to be out of the dark,” Yaz says.

“Definitely. Not a fan of the dark myself, really, but there was that time I jumped into--” the Doctor stops abruptly, turning back the way they’d come and raising the sonic. The others immediately turn as well, looking into the darkness. They don’t step behind her this time. Hadn’t they, before? She isn’t sure. There’s a pressure around her head, phantom hands, squeezing. 

The barn door creaks open and the desert wind rushes in. _Theta!_ Pressure in her head, hazey behind her eyes, thick under her tongue, sharp against her teeth. _Theta, where are you?_ That voice, that voice she knew. 

Charley is screaming on Cimmeria IV. 

_Tell her… oh, she knows._

The fall had come so fast after that. He hadn’t even felt it when he’d hit the ground.

“What is it?” Yaz asks.

The Doctor shakes her head. She lowers the sonic until it casts light more evenly across the floor. “Nothing. Just spooked myself a bit, I think. That probably wasn’t a story I should be telling,” she says lightly. She’s uneasy, a goosebump disquiet creeping up her neck. Fear lingers almost incongruously, where it shouldn’t be, keeping her hearts pounding and fear soursweet behind her teeth. She doesn’t remember being that scared.

She remains quiet as they continue on, the sound of their footsteps the only disturbance in the silence, a metronome sound pacing time as it stretches languidly in the dim perception of the dark.

The Doctor stops so suddenly Graham almost bumps into her as she points the sonic back again. “Did you hear that?” she asks.

Hollow, like the wind in the desert. A clockwork tick, hot beneath his hands. _Tell me Doctor, are you afraid of the big, bad wolf?_

“Hear what?” Graham asks. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I didn’t hear anything either,” Ryan says.

The Doctor studies the sonic with a face of unhappy concentration. When she looks up, she’s looking past them and into the darkness of the corridor behind. “Nothing there,” she says, caught somewhere between relieved and dejected. They continue walking but only progress a few paces before she turns and this time manages to collide with Graham in her haste. “No,” she says. “Not hear. _Feel_.”

She points the sonic at their feet, sweeping each pair of shoes before studying the reading.

“Now you’re scaring me,” Yaz says. Her voice is stiff but the Doctor can feel her fear even a pace away. Humans feel so loudly.

The Doctor doesn’t reply, instead using the sonic to cast its light along the ground at their feet. “It’s not the Vashta Nerada,” she says. “Only one shadow each.”

“What?” Graham says at the apparent non sequitur.

“Maybe keep count anyway,” she suggests distractedly.

“ _What_?” Ryan coughs.

“What’s going on,” Yaz demands, a warning rather than a question, a tone perfected by police training but developed by a lifetime of dealing with a younger sister.

“How do you feel?” the Doctor asks in lieu of an answer.

Yaz replies, “A little freaked out,” at the same moment Ryan says, “Spooked.”

“Claustrophobic,” Graham says. 

The Doctor steps in front of him. “Why.”

“We’re in the dark.”

“Rephrase that answer.”

Graham pauses before saying slowly, “Because of the dark.”

The Doctor nods. “Yes. I think so.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> America, man. Wow.

“So, what now? We just keep walking in the dark until we find out what’s wrong down here?” Graham says. “Not sure I like that option.”

“No,” the Doctor replies, “we’re going to find a way to the surface as soon as possible.” Discomfort is hot on the back of her neck, prickling like sun in the desert, and she shivers. She hurries down the corridor, coat sweeping out behind her, the sonic casting just a bit more light than before. “Someone on the surface will likely be able to tell us what’s down here, if anything.”

“‘If anything?’” Yaz repeats. “You seemed pretty sure about that a minute ago.”

“Fear is a powerful thing, Yaz. More powerful than most living creatures you’ll ever encounter.” 

_Did you really run, Theta? What did the Schism show you?_

She shakes her head and the thought is gone as soon as it appeared. The floor feels unsteady under her feet, like she isn’t sure when her boots will touch the ground as she steps.

“You’re afraid?” Ryan asks, probing, not willing to let that statement go.

“You just said there might not be anything to be afraid of,” Yaz adds.

“Changed my mind.” She tilts a hand vaguely. “Reevaluated.”

“But you just said it,” Yaz protests.

“Okay…” Graham says slowly. “How much further?”

“Dunno.”

They all fall quiet, straining to listen past the sound of their own footsteps, more afraid than hoping to hear something. The tunnel is silent, eerily so, an oppressive lack sound that presses in on them more closely than the walls themselves.Yaz, the furthest behind as they walk, casts glances over her shoulder every few strides. 

They’ve been hurrying along the corridor long enough for their calves to ache at the pace when the Doctor slows to a stop. She studies the sonic for a moment before she says, “Wait here.” It’s a sudden decision, but the pressure of their trepidation against her back is making her skin crawl with a feeling not unlike a damp shirt drying against her skin.

“Where are you going?” Yaz demands.

“To scout ahead. I’ll be right back.”

“Are we safer together?”

“Probably,” she nods as she turns away.

Yaz catches her sleeve. “You can’t just leave--”

The Doctor shakes her grip free with a sharp tug of her arm. “Don’t _touch_ me.”

Yaz looks shocked to hear that tone directed at herself. The Doctor knows Ryan and Graham are too; she can feel it, even if she can’t bear to look at them. She can’t seem to look away from Yaz’s wide eyes, though.

The moment snaps like chalk. There are numbers on the board, the scratch of chalk shaping an equation, phantom hands squeezing her head until all she tastes is metallic under her tongue, but no, that’s the smell of the rusted pipes that she’s tasting. Sharp like citrus. Bitter like crayons and blood on the floor, more equations and nonsense logic and madness creeping in at the edges.

“Go back to the TARDIS,” the Doctor says. “She can protect you.” She keeps her body angled away from them, Yaz’s fear and frustration still thick in her mind like a film on her skin where she’d touched her.

“No, no way,” Ryan protests. “We stick together, yeah? Safety in numbers?”

“Yeah,” Graham agrees, “flat team structure, right?”

The Doctor presses her lips together in irritation at having her own words thrown back at her when they’re most definitely not convenient. “You’re not coming with me,” she says tightly.

“You can’t just… send us away,” Yaz says in disbelief, fumbling for the words. “We’re with you. We’re a team. It doesn’t work like that.”

“It does when I say it does,” the Doctor returns. Yaz opens her mouth to argue but she interrupts her before she can get a word out. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Yaz says, but looks unhappy at what she knows is coming next.

“Then go back to the TARDIS. She’ll be able to protect you better than I can. Whatever this is, it’s interfering with her. I don’t know what that means, not yet, but I also need to protect _her_. In order for me to do that, I need to figure out what’s keeping her here.”

“Okay,” Yaz says, acquiescence sitting heavily on tense shoulders. Except that isn’t right, is it, because the Doctor knows Yaz shouldn’t be agreeing.

Graham clicks on his flashlight. “At least I’m prepared.” Ryan snorts, attention drawn away from her, distracted. “Laugh all you want. When you’re hungry I won’t share my sarnie.” Yaz smiles, knowing full well that Graham will still share. They’re already turning away, back the way they’d come.

“Three hours,” the Doctor says, turning the sonic in her palm. “I’ll be back in three hours.”

“If you’re not, we’re coming to look for you,” Yaz says over her shoulder. And that’s right, isn’t it. They won’t leave her here. Except they should.

_I am the Doctor, and I am afraid._

“Three hours,” Graham agrees.

The Doctor turns away and leaves them without looking back. Something is burning behind her eyes, hot and thick like desert sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which I walk backward into hell while referencing obscure bits of eu canon, some of which I've never read. Canon is an abstract concept in these here parts. Unrelatedly, big thanks to tyrsenian for the technicality about the black hole. One of us studies astrophysics and it's certainly not me.


	3. Chapter 3

The lights in the control room are sallow against the shadows congealing in the corners. The TARDIS hums softly, a gentle sound without melody, a calm reassurance. If they close their eyes they can almost forget that something is wrong until the darkness behind their eyelids reminds them.

“How long?” Yaz asks, not for the first time. They’d gathered where the light pools in the ring of crystals and haven’t strayed since.

“Not three hours,” Ryan quips impatiently; it’s been the same answer every time.

Idleness doesn’t suit either of them, Graham knows. “We have,” he leans forward to read the display on Ryan’s watch, “twenty minutes left.”

Yaz shifts her weight and nods, slightly appeased that the time they’d agreed upon had almost passed. She remembers agreeing to return to the TARDIS, to let the Doctor go, but it feels distant from her, like something she’d dreamed, like something that had happened to someone else, a story she’s heard so many times that she can imagine it as reality. She doesn’t know why she would ever have agreed.

The TARDIS’s hum changes, just slightly, just enough to draw their attention. The fam jump to their feet at the sound at the door, stepping backwards, breath catching in trepidation. It opens and out of the darkness comes the Doctor, barely discernible as she pulls the door closed.

“Fam!” she cries. “You made it back! Good job; well done. Not that I had anything but absolute faith in you, but I did have some second thoughts--”

She steps further into the sickly yellow light and Yaz gasps.

“Doc,” Graham says.

“You’re a proper mess,” Ryan says. He’s right, of course; there’s blood clinging, still slick and shining, to the left side of her face, starting at her hairline and curving beneath her jaw and smeared like paint across her cheekbone where she must have touched it.

“I’m fine. Always fine, me. Right as rain. Dunno why they say that-- rain’s just rain. Usually. Well, I say usually. Because I don’t mean always. Sometimes rain is actually so much more than rain. But mostly it’s just rain.”

Yaz reaches out like she’s going to grab the Doctor’s arm to stop her from moving away but the Doctor sidesteps her. There’s something wrong with the way she’s moving, Yaz thinks, too careful, too restrained. Not at all like her usual careless energy.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I fell into a pit with the devil? That was a _really_ strange day. There was this asteroid, in orbit around a black hole-- which is, of course, impossible; nothing can maintain a stable orbit that close to a black hole-- and--”

“You need to take care of that,” Graham says, his words cautiously measured in tone. 

“Nah, probably already healed anyway. I’m made of hardier stuff than you lot.” She sets to flipping switches on the console.

“You did stick your finger up your nose and faint the first day we met you,” Ryan says.

“To be fair,” she protests genially, “I had just died earlier that day. And fallen through the roof of a train.” 

Ryan shrugs a shoulder in casual concession of her point.

“That aside,” Yaz interjects with a glare thrown at Ryan, “Where’re we going? We can’t just leave.”

“We’re not leaving. Well, leaving here, hopefully. Not leaving now, just moving to the surface. Maybe. Hopefully.” She continues to flip switches and turn dials and do everything she usually does to set the TARDIS in motion, but the exuberant flourish with which she usually does it is wholly absent. Yaz and Graham share a glance. 

Graham approaches the console, careful to stay out of her way. “Are you sure you’re alright? That had to have been a pretty bad fall you took.”

The Doctor squeezes her eyes shut for a moment even as she reaches for another switch.

“ _Graham_ ,” she chastises. “I’m fine! Wouldn’t I tell you if I wasn’t fine?” All three of her companions open their mouths to respond a resounding ‘no,’ but when she pulls the final lever, instead of the familiar grinding of gears the room is plunged into darkness. They have a brief moment to gasp before the pale emergency lights flicker on. 

Deep in the recesses of the TARDIS the cloister bell begins to toll, a slow, chilling sound that reverberates in their chests and leaves them feeling hollow. “No,” the Doctor says. “No, no, no.” Her fam’s fear is sharp against the edges of her mind, clawing for purchase, desperate. She throws more switches, presses more buttons, adjusts some levers. They watch her as she circles the console, the tension in her ratcheting tighter as they watch. The Doctor finally comes to a stop and sets her hand to the console. “What is it?” she says softly. The TARDIS isn’t forthcoming, only sending her a vague feeling of claustrophobia, of fear, tearing at her, scrabbling with sharp nails against her mind. She looks at the doors. “I need more information.”

She studies a reading on the console, trying to ignore the trepidation rolling off of her friends in waves, buffeting her mind, breaking over her mental defences like waves. She tangles her fingers in her hair but withdraws them in confusion, pulling free a flower. It’s small and round and white, a halo of small petals around a yellow center. She stares at it pinched between her fingers. 

“Is anyone else having déjà vu?” Ryan says. 

The Doctor drops the flower absently to the grating. “Ten points,” she says softly.

“I don’t like this,” Yaz says.

“Neither do I,” the Doctor agrees. Her fingers are still pinched but the flower is gone; she looks down to the grating where she knows it must have fallen. There’s nothing there. “I remember,” she says, but the words turn to dust in her mouth, a bitter copper taste clinging under her tongue and in the spaces between her teeth. “We were… we were…” There’s a pull behind her eyes, a sinking, drowning feeling pulling from the deep and she grabs at the console like it will keep her from being swept away. “The festival,” she says and the words burn like ash.

“You keep going on about this festival,” Ryan says from near the stairs. He sounds like he’s edging towards irritation. It’s hard, sometimes, to play the suspense to her advantage and keep her friends excited for whatever new adventure they’re on without playing it up too much. She’s played it up too much this time, she thinks.

“I know, I know,” she dismisses. “But it really is amazing. Or so I’ve heard. Always wanted to go, but, well, you know how it is. So much to see. Never quite made it.” Something inside her strikes a warning at that, like an echo of the cloister bell ringing in her chest. She straightens up where she stands at the console and studies the monitors. 

“Neither have we,” Yaz snorts.

The Doctor turns to her. “I said I was sorry,” she offers.

Yaz smiles. 

Graham puts his elbows on his knees where he’s sat on the stairs. “Come on, Doc, are we-- I mean, did we finally make it?”

“Before sunset?” Ryan jabs.

Something violent cuts itself across her vision, orange and searing like light seen through tightly shut eyelids. She grabs at the console again. She needs to land them, or-- they’ve already landed. She doesn’t remember landing.

“Before sunset,” she confirms, looking at one of the monitors. The worry from a moment ago slips away like a shadow receding in the light.

“You’re sure?” Graham asks.

“Yes!” the Doctor says indignantly. “I mean, probably. I hope so, anyway; not that the Parsonian Revolution of Three Dot Delta One wasn’t exciting--”

“A little too exciting,” Ryan mutters to Yaz, making her smile.

“Oi!” the Doctor protests. “I apologized! And so did they! And they gave us lunch.”

“Yes, that did help,” Graham agrees earnestly.

“So, can we go now? Before we miss it?” Ryan asks, moving toward the doors in his excitement.

The others gather behind him and the Doctor gestures to the doors. “Do you want to do the honors?” she asks with a smile.

Ryan opens the door and steps out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to tyrsenian for the very much appreciated lecture on black holes. One of us studies space and it's decidedly not I.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tyrsenian, the Threshold joke is for you :)

Ryan speaks first. “You can’t--” he starts, but the words feel very far away from whatever meaning had occurred to him.

Yaz moves first, reaching for the Doctor’s arm. The Doctor sidesteps her and moves to the other side of the console as though to check a reading none of them understand. Yaz doesn’t like the way she’s moving, too carefully, too contained. It’s incongruent and wrong and Yaz doesn’t know why.

“You’re a proper mess,” Ryan says to the Doctor. Yaz looks at him, confused.

“Yeah,” Graham agrees. “At least let us get that cleaned up, yeah?”

The Doctor ignores them. Yaz watches her hands on the console.

“Stay here,” she finally says. 

“No,” Yaz protests.

“Doc,” Graham warns.

“Didn’t we--” Ryan starts.

The Doctor puts a hand on his shoulder, her other arm tight against her body even as she looks at his shoes and points the sonic at his feet. She walks between the three of them before passing the sonic to her other hand and raising it to her face. She squints at it for a moment before some of the lines of stress around her eyes release. 

“Stay here,” she repeats. “Find torches in case the lights go out.” She looks at Graham’s flashlight, abandoned on the floor. Discordant. 

“The lights are going to go out?” Ryan says, voice tight, stumbling over the words.

“Maybe,” the Doctor says. Her voice is uncharacteristically flat and Graham narrows his eyes at her. “Stay here,” she repeats. She meets his critical glare unflinchingly, blood still shining on her face, dried and flaking at the edges, dark on the collar of her shirt. “Find torches, and keep count of your shadows. Just in case.” 

“Of our _what_?” Graham coughs. 

“Just in case,” the Doctor dismisses, almost apologetic, sounding a bit more like herself. She moves toward the door but Yaz follows.

“You’re not leaving without an explanation,” she says. Ryan knows it's supposed to be a command, but it’s edging towards panic. “Why can’t we leave? What’s happening here?”

The Doctor looks at Yaz for a very long moment. The yellow light casts her face in dusky shadow that makes her look almost unfamiliar. “I don’t know what it’s like to be human,” she finally says. Her voice is soft, hazy like the yellow light. She looks between the three of them. “Can you feel it too?” 

“Feel what?” Ryan asks.

“Déjà vu,” Graham says.

The Doctor’s eyes flick to him, quick and sharp. “Ten points,” she says, still incongruously soft. “Stay here. The TARDIS can’t protect you if you leave.”

“What does that mean for you?” Yaz protests.

“It means I have to be careful,” the Doctor says over her shoulder. Then she’s gone and the door is closed behind her.

“I don’t think that’s going to go well for her,” Ryan says quietly.

*

Gallifrey is burning behind her eyes. The first time, the second, she isn’t even sure.

_Why is there never a big red button?_

Words, burned into Clara’s palm. Was that before or after? Both, maybe. _Beautiful, fragile human skin._

There’s so much noise in her head. Everything that’s surfacing slips away before she can grab onto it. It’s like trying to catch fish. Or frogs. Or salamanders. Or those salamander people with their funny little mustaches, but she can’t remember what planet that was on because there’s so much noise in her head and she feels like her brains are about to come pouring out her ears and--

She’s so surprised that she stops, listening to the sound of her own breathing, loud in the silence. The pressure in her head sits thick like porridge beneath the sudden understanding that blooms above it. She’d said it before, to Graham, or maybe she hadn’t. She isn’t sure if she did or if she didn’t or if he’d said it to her, or maybe she’d said it to Yaz, or it could have been Ryan--

She presses the heel of one hand to her temple like the external pressure will draw away the internal pressure. Or at least calibrate it a bit, maybe. She raises her other hand to scan the pipes marching rustily along the walls. It’s so quiet. “Oh!” she exclaims aloud. “No steam, no water, no sewage.” Her head is aching. “That’s why it’s so quiet,” she says to the darkness. Her own voice echoes back to her. There is no groaning and shuddering of pipes heating and cooling. As if the city is sleeping above. “Coincidence?” She looks around at the featureless walls.

She’d said it before. She can feel it. She tightens her hand uneasily around the sonic, curiosity not quite outweighing trepidation this time. “What’re you, then?” she asks the darkness as she begins to walk again. “I’m the Doctor. I’m sorry if we disturbed you down here. I meant to put us on the surface, but missed by a bit. My friends and I just want to go to the festival.”

It’s so hard to _think_. Her head feels like it’s made of glass, slowly cracking like ice that can’t bear her weight. Except, no, because now she’s mixing metaphors. Her thoughts are jagged and fragile and all she sees is the citadel, shattered. There is ash on the breeze and soot on her tongue. Smoke rises in the air, billowing unhurried from the destruction, and her eyes follow it to that carnelian sky turned umber in ruin. It reaches the zenith and violet cuts violent across her vision. Fear is thick and slippery in her throat. The pull behind her eyes feels like falling.

_When did you last go home?_

She can hear Charley screaming. Stubborn, undeterrable Charley who had played at never being frightened of anything. She can hear Charley’s voice raw with terror, echoing through the halls of the base. Charley had hugged her, hugged him, independence be damned, small hands fisting in his jacket as she breathed the terror and the pain away.

_Zagreus sits inside your head.  
Zagreus lives among the dead._

Such an old rhyme. Granny Four had always favored that story, however much the Doctor had hated it as a child.

_Zagreus is the Time Lords’ shame,  
The beast that I’ve been keeping._

She shivers.

_Everything you think you know is a lie._

Someone is still screaming-- she can hear it echoing around in her head, a brittle, strained sound, weak and primal and desperate. It’s not Charley’s voice, but it’s one she knows. It takes her a moment, and eventually the realization settles. It’s her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me trying to find the will to do my finals, finish the last part of this fic, and not eat a toaster strudel for dinner because I'm currently 70% disillusionment and 30% caffeine.

**Author's Note:**

> I've recently been re-traumatizing myself with a bunch of the Eighth Doctor audios, if you couldn't tell.


End file.
